


Out of Contact

by pickleplum



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:37:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickleplum/pseuds/pickleplum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do we do now, sir?” When Marshal Pentecost doesn’t turn or answer, Tendo Choi knows it’s up to him to find Gipsy Danger and her pilots. Or at least recover the bodies, he thinks with a shiver.</p><p>That last plasma cannon burst blinded us and the storm is screwing with coastal radar, he thinks frantically, but there are eyes out there that might see something. Anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Contact

“What do we do now, sir?” When Marshal Pentecost doesn’t turn or answer, Tendo Choi knows it’s up to him to find _Gipsy Danger_ and her pilots. Or at least recover the bodies, he thinks with a shiver.

That last plasma cannon burst blinded us and the storm is screwing with coastal radar, he thinks frantically, but there are eyes out there that might see something. Anything.

“Alert every asset in and around Cook Inlet! Cops, troopers, medevac, fishing vessels, lighthouses, goddamn seagulls, everything! Cut in on the emergency frequencies and broadcast a call! And stay on the channels in case someone volunteers something! Get me _anything_ that might be able to spot _Gipsy_! And find that damn fishing boat!”

He whirls back to his station and calls for Shatterdome choppers to get to _Gipsy_ ’s last known position. “What do you mean the weather’s too bad to fly? I don’t give a shit about storms, Chief! Get your birds in the air! We have pilots in trouble out there!” He slams the connection closed. He hopes there are pilots alive out there to be in trouble.

“Mr. Choi! I have the boat. The _Saltchuck_ ,” one of the LOCCENT techs calls.

“Gimme!” The tech transfers the connection to Choi’s station. “ _Saltchuck_ , this is PPDC Anchorage LOCCENT. Do you have eyes on our Jaeger?”

“Negative, LOCCENT. Af-after the f-fight, it started walking … uh … south-southeast toward Kenai. We tracked it to the edge of radar range and lost it about … six miles off the coast.”

“Did you get a heading for it?”

“Sorry, no. Too busy trying to get our butts to shore in one piece.” There’s a pause while the captain confers with another crew member. “Our best guess is if it kept straight it would come in on the south shore of the inlet well north of Kenai.”

“Thanks, Captain. Do you need us to call for assistance for you?”

“N-no, we’re fine. Headed back to Anchorage under full power.” He adds quietly, “Good luck finding your men. We owe them everything.”

“Radio us immediately if you see anything, Captain.”

“Will do.”

After that, there are only reports of seeing nothing. Nothing from the land; The storm has driven everyone inside. Nothing from the water; No boats are out in this weather. Nothing from the air; No one but the suicidal (and those afraid of the Marshal) are flying now. Minutes stretch to hours with no information. Tendo reaches for his ninth--or is it fifteenth?--cup of coffee. How hard can it be to find a 260-foot-tall mecha? he asks himself. The 0800 shift change comes and goes, but Tendo remains rooted at his position.

Another hour passes as the sun rises on an Alaskan coast wrapped in a snowstorm.

_”MR. CHOI! WE’VE GOT HER!”_

“Where? How?” Tendo is instantly across the room and leaning over the tech’s shoulder.

“North of Nikiski. Local 911’s got a report of a Jaeger collapsing on a beach. Some kid calling,” the tech reports.

“The pilots?” Tendo can barely speak around the lump in his throat. The tech strains to hear the staticky transmission.

“Kid only saw one pilot. Local EMS is dispatching a chopper to pick him up and medevac him to Soldotna hospital.”

“Get our guys down there to meet him. We’ve got better doctors than Soldotna and we can beat them to our pilot. And send some techs to assess _Gipsy_ and start planning to collect her.” He crosses back to his station, takes a deep breath, and calls Pentecost.

“We’ve found _Gipsy_ , sir. I’ve already got our guys in motion to recover her and her pilot.”

“Pilot, Mr. Choi?”

“Preliminary information is only one pilot made it to land with the Jaeger, sir.”

“I see. Keep me informed, Mr. Choi.”

The minutes until the chopper pilots reach the Jaeger are some of the longest of Tendo’s life. Finally, the report comes in.

“We’ve got Raleigh and are on our way back to base. He’s beat up pretty bad and just keeps saying Yancy’s name. No sign of Yancy. The Conn-pod was ripped open, looks like the kaiju might have pulled him out.” Tendo thought he was ready for the news, but he still pales and tightens his grip on the edge of his station. He relays the information to Pentecost.

Tendo ends his report quietly, “Yancy’s missing. Presumed dead.”

“Thank you, Mr. Choi.” Pentecost sounds cool and calm as he always does and he ends the call.

Tendo wishes he felt that stable. As it is, he feels like his heart is breaking.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt:](http://pacificrimkink.livejournal.com/1613.html?thread=2025549#t2025549)  
> "more specifically, what happened in LOCCENT control between Yancy's death and Raleigh turning up on the beach. And I want details. nitty-gritty details, as many as you can give me. I want the horror of realizing that Knifehead wasn't actually dead, I want the reaction to Yancy's death, I want to know if they had eyes on Raleigh in Gipsy from the time he finished Knifehead and headed for the shore, or if when Knifehead tore into the Conn-Pod it damaged the connections to LOCCENT as well, leaving those in the control room blind to what was happening. I want Stacker giving orders for recovery of Gipsy, including orders to contact the fishing vessel the brothers disobeyed orders to save becuase they're the only ones with eyes on the scene. I want him putting the coastline under survailence, with a tap into local emergency channels as well, because maybe some civilian saw or found something that could lead them to Gipsy. +10000 if that's how they find out Raleigh survived. the boy was ordered to get help, he calls 911, the anchorage shatterdome gets a copy of the call and is first on scene."
> 
> Oh, the research that went into this one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a spot near Anchorage that meets all of the statements Tendo, Pentecost, the Beckets, and the guys on the boat say about the location of the Knifehead battle. There’s no spot within ten miles of Anchorage that is more than seven miles from land, thanks to a big old thing called [Fire Island that shields the city’s peninsula from Cook Inlet](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Anchorage,+AK&hl=en&ll=61.155826,-150.008698&spn=0.557175,1.234589&sll=37.720807,-89.213008&sspn=0.228389,0.308647&oq=ancho&t=h&hnear=Anchorage,+Alaska&z=10). There’s also no part of the Gulf of Alaska (assuming that’s the gulf that Yancy mentions) within ten miles of the city. And then there’s the issue of the light.
> 
> God help me, I looked up [sunrise times for Anchorage on February 29, 2020](http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.php) (the date given for the incident on the wiki), and found it wouldn’t be bright until something like 9am, after an 8am sunrise. The Beckets are roused at 2am. That’s 7 hours that have to be covered. So I staged the battle at a pretty good distance from Anchorage at a shallow spot in the Cook Inlet (the arm of the ocean that reaches up to Anchorage) called the Middle Ground Shoal. It’s about seven miles off the coast of the Inlet, so it jives with Tendo’s statement that the Knifehead fight happens in the shallows seven miles off the coast. Middle Ground Shoal also looks quite a bit like the depth chart on Tendo’s display during that scene. Yes, I really did pull up [NOAA’s seafloor charts](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/16663.shtml) to scout locations. [Nikiski](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Nikiski,+AK&hl=en&ll=60.689318,-151.287231&spn=0.565393,1.234589&sll=37.720807,-89.213008&sspn=0.228389,0.308647&oq=niki&t=h&hnear=Nikiski,+Kenai+Peninsula,+Alaska&z=10) is a village with a nice long beach bordered by hills. Soldotna is the nearest town to it with an actual hospital. It would have been a shorter walk to head for the north shore, but there are no towns in the area and, thus, no reason for the kid and his granddad to be out there. With no GPS or help from LOCCENT and messed up from pain and losing Yancy, Raleigh wouldn’t necessarily know the optimal path to take to get to land, either. 
> 
> _I fuckin’ love research._
> 
> Recommended listening: [My Bloody Valentine, _Loveless_ , Track 7, “Come in Alone”](http://youtu.be/u0DLCyWrxDo)
> 
> As always, I love comments and feel free to suggest ideas here or at my tumblr (<http://pickle-plum.tumblr.com>)


End file.
